Chapter 9!!! Sorry for the delay to those of you who are still at all interested in this, but I made it even longer than the last one, so that's why. And I'm warning you right now, most of you aren't going to like the way this chapter ends, but please please please bear with me, I'm going somewhere, and I promise you'll be happy at the end, because I don't do sad endings, okay? Good. Now that that's settled… read and PLEASE REVIEW!!!
~MADDY~
Disclaimer: I don't own them or anything silly like that.
"Can I ask you something?" Chandler began, playing with the label on his beer. He was sitting in the living room with Monica watching the Knicks on TV, having put Faith to bed almost an hour ago.
"Sure," she said absently, leafing through that month's InStyle. "What's up?"
"I was just thinking a lot recently… about stuff," he said, a hint of nervousness in his casual demeanor.
"Mm-hmm," she responded, flipping the page, obviously engrossed in which sandals to wear in various situations.
"Can you put that down for a second?" he asked, slightly irritated. "I'm trying to say something." She looked up, surprised.
"Yeah, of course," she said, tossing the magazine onto the coffee table. "What's going on?"
"I was just thinking a lot lately, especially since Faith's birthday, and I wanted to make sure we're still on the same page," he said, still picking at the label. She took a deep breath.
"Oh. Okay. Yeah, that's a good idea."
"All right. Because, I mean, it's been a year, that you've been back. And it's been what… ten months since we started being- well whatever we are, I guess that's the question."
"That's not a question," she joked, then sobered off his look.
"Mon, I'm serious here," he said quietly.
"I know. I guess I just don't really know what you're asking."
"Neither do I, really… I guess I just was wondering since you know, the incident at the party, if you ever… think about-"
"I thought we talked about that and were fine," she interrupted.
"We did… we were."
"Were?"
"Yeah. Mon, listen… this year has been the most amazing year of my life, and it began so questionably. When Jaime left, I thought that that was it for me. I was going to leave her, Mon. For like five seconds, I actually considered leaving my own daughter."
"But you didn't. That's what matters," she said, taking his hand reassuringly.
"I know that now. I know that, because of you. You're the reason I'm here, that we're both here, you're the reason Faith didn't fall off of her changing table that first month or choke on some stupid thing I left lying around. And you're the reason I learned those things, the reason I can do it on my own now. But you're also the reason I never want to have to," he said, looking in her eyes.
"Chandler… you're a good father because you were meant to be one, and because you love her more than you love yourself. It has nothing to do with me," she told him.
"You're wrong. It has everything to do with you. If you had gone back to Boston three weeks into this thing… I know we'd be fine, I know I'd love her just as much and that the other guys would have helped me out as much as I needed them to… but it would have been so much different, and soemtimes when I think about how things could have gone, I just want to cry," he admitted. "I guess I'm saying that you're the best friend that anyone could ever hope to have." She held her hand to her heart, touched by his sentiment.
"Chandler… if I'm that great of a friend, it's only because you taught me to be that way," she insisted.
"The point of this," he continued, ignoring her last statement, "is that ten months ago, whether we want to admit to it or not, you became more than just my friend, Monica. The second we kissed, I started keeping a secret from you. I didn't tell you the one thing I knew to be true that first night we were together, which is that I knew friendship was never going to be enough for me anymore."
"Chandler… I thought we agreed that-"
"We would stay friends, and if this became a problem for either one of us that we'd stop. I know."
"Is that what you want?" she asked. He looked at her. Her hair was haphazardly pulled back from her face leaving several strands too short for the elastic falling around her face. Her skin was lightly bronzed from the early summer weather. Her knees were pulled up and hugged close to her chest, her face, eyes slightly squinted, mouth slightly open, held an expression that mixed concern, anxiety and sympathy. God, that was so far from what he wanted.
"No. That's not what I want," he said.
"Okay, good, because that's not what I want either."
"What do you want?" he asked, almost frustrated. "Because it seems we spend an awful lot of time talking ourselves in circles and never really get to that."
"I want… I want what we have. This is perfect, right now, Chandler, or it was-"
"What we have now and what we had ten months ago is glaringly different, Monica, and if you'd just admit it to yourself-"
"Of course it's different, a lot changes in ten months. Everyone knows, for one thing."
"Yeah, everyone knows. Everyone knows what? That we screw, on occasion?"
"Chandler, what is this?" she asked, reaching for his arm, taken aback by his bitterness. He sighed.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."
"Yes, you did," she said softly. "Why can't you just tell me what you want to say?"
"Okay. Listen, I don't want to screw up what we have. I told you I'd give you whatever you wanted, and I meant it. But at Faith's birthday… my mother's friend, when she said… when she said we…"
"Made a beautiful family," Monica finished. "Why can't you say it?"
"Because I wanted it, okay?" he said, raising his voice at her utter inability to see what he felt. "Because I wanted us to be a family, when she said that, I wanted you to be my wife, and Faith's mother… and do you have any idea how close 'Mon' and 'Mom' sound? You have to have noticed that, Monica. When she says Mon, you have to realize what it sounds like she's saying to people who don't know us. And every time she says it, which is about eight billion times a day, I get this pang, right here," he says, gesturing his heart, "because she doesn't know that you aren't her mom, or even what a mom is… she knows Mon, she knows what you are to her, she knows you are the person who kisses her when she cries and feeds her when she's hungry and helped her learn to walk and comes in when she's afraid… and that's all she needs to know. And I wish that was all I needed to know, Monica, I really do."
"What do you need to know?" she asked, tears glistening in her eyes. "Ask me, and maybe I can give you an answer. God, Chandler, of course I got freaked out when she said my name. But I love her, Chandler, that's what I give her, that's what she needs, and that's why she doesn't have to wonder about anything. So what do you need? What am I not giving you, where have I somehow fucked this up?" she asked, raising her own voice. "Because I really don't know where this is coming from. What do you need to know?" she finished, wiping her eyes.
"Do you love me?" he blurted out. There. He'd done it. After ten months of sleeping together, raising a child together, spending every free moment together, neither had said that word. She half laughed, shook her head.
"God, Chandler, of course I do," she started.
"No, Monica. Not like that. Not like a best friend. I told you ten months ago you weren't ready to hear this, but I don't care anymore. I love you. Okay? I do. And you knew that, and I knew that, but what I don't know is if you feel the same way. Because us, you and me, the way it is now, is fine, it's great, I love what we are. But if you don't see, somewhere down the road, giving me more of yourself than you are right now, I don't know what we're doing," he finished, rambling out all the words he had been holding in for longer than he cared to remember. He looked at her.
"Chandler… I wanted this to be simple. I wanted it to be fun, and easy, and it was. Because I wasn't, and I'm still not, at a place in my life where I wanted to be tied down. That's why I left New York in the first place. But it happened, didn't it? I am tied… to you, to Faith, to our friends, to this city, to my life here, as it has been for the past year. So," she said, looking at him in the eyes, "if you're asking me if I think there may be a day, somewhere down the road, when I'm ready to say that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, then yes, I do think that's a possibility. If you're asking me if that day is today, then… no. I'm sorry, but it's not."
"Okay," he said, slightly hurt though he didn't know why.
"Chandler… please. I do love you. I always have, and on some level, I know I always will. What we have is special, this connection, and it's not something I'm going to lose without a fight."
"You're not losing anything," he said gently. "I asked if you saw us having a future someday, and you told me what I needed to know. For now… that's fine," he told her.
"Are you sure?" she asked, eyes filling again. "Because I don't want you to feel held back-"
"Monica, you're 26. I'm not proposing. I just wanted to know, that's all."
"Okay," she said, sniffling.
"Okay," he mimicked, smiling. She smiled back.
"Come here," she said, pulling herself up onto his lap and wrapping her arms around him, their foreheads resting together.
"I do love you," she said quietly.
"I know," he said. She kissed him softly, sweetly.
"So that's enough?"
"Anything from you is enough," he told her, echoing words spoken months, maybe lifetimes, earlier. This time, she knew in her heart he was lying.
Monica was having coffee the next morning across the hall in Phoebe and Rachel's apartment.
"Mon, you okay? You look exhausted," Rachel commented.
"Yeah… I didn't get much sleep," she replied.
"Ooooohhhh, hot night?" Phoebe teased.
The rest of the gang had found out about Monica and Chandler's "sordid affair", as Ross pronounced it, several months earlier, by complete accident. Phoebe had walked in on them making out on the couch on the first occasion they forgot to lock the door, and news had travelled fast, as it always had within their group. Ross was, of course, furious at first, and no one really understood why they refused to call eachother their "girlfriend" or "boyfriend", why they remained little more than best friends with benefits, and why they were exclusive yet wouldn't label it "dating". Eventually, the pair just decided to stop answering their questions, which caused them to die down. Now their relationship was out in the open and just one more thing for the group to roll their eyes at and one more aspect of their living arrangement to say "now that's dysfunctional" about.
"Haha… yeah not so much," Monica said, sighing.
"What's wrong?" Phoebe asked, concerned about her friend.
"Nothing… Chandler and I had kind of an intense discussion last night. A 'where-is-this-going, what-are-we-doing kind of discussion." The two girls groaned.
"Well, I must say, I called that one," Rachel pointed out, referring to months earier when she had predicted one of them would get antsy for more comittment.
"It was just… so out of the blue. I thought we were fine, with what we were." Phoebe and Rachel exchanged a look. "What?" Monica asked, observing their expressions.
"Nothing, just… what are you, exactly?" Phoeb asked, as delicately as she could. Monica sighed.
"I don't know. Friends, I guess, above all else, but… there's more there."
"What tipped you off to that one, besides the nightly sex?" Rachel asked sarcastically, rolling her eyes. Monica swatted her arm.
"Shut up," she said. "And not every night, by the way."
"Monica, seriously… what do you see this evolving into, if anything?" Phoebe asked.
"God, now you sound like him," Monica said exasperadedly.
"Well of course he wants to know that, Mon, I mean come on… he's only been completely in love with you for the past six years," Phoebe exclaimed. Monica looked at her, startled. "What? Come on, you had to know that. Everyone knew that."
"I knew that, and I only met him last year," Rachel added.
"You're deluded," Monica said, standing to clear their breakfast dishes.
"No, that would be you. Monica, it's so obvious… the fact that he barely had two serious relationships in six years, and the fact that every time you did he'd act all weird and posessive, and how he used to be all touchy with you all the time, and how whenever you would just walk into the room it was like so obvious that that was just the best part of his day," Phoebe rambled.
"Did he tell you this? Did he actually come out and tell you all this stuff, or did you come up with it on your own?" Monica demanded.
"He didn't have to tell me, it's so obvious... ask anyone. We talk about it all the time." Monica looked at her sarcastically.
"Thanks."
Later that day, Monica was at work, but couldn't stop thinking about her conversation with Phoebe and Rachel earlier that morning. The thought of Chandler spending six years pining after her, even though she really didn't believe it, completely unnerved her. Because, she thought, it totally changed everything about their relationship. If that was true, it was no longer a mutual attraction, stumbled across when they were forced into close living quarters, something that came spontaneously and that neither of them had been expecting, and had grown from there; no, if this was true, it meant that that night, the night they kissed for the first time, it was spontaneous and completely attraction based for her, but for him… it was like he had thought about it, probably fantasized about it, and that just made the whole thing totally weird.
And, she pointed out to herself, if by some chance they were right about this, it would mean that he'd been dishonest with her. Honesty was the one pillar of their friendship that she valued almost above everything else, and he had been so far from honest. She had to ask him about it. And it could very well change everything. But she had to know.
"Thanks for meeting me," Monica said as Chandler kissed her cheek and took his seat across from her at the restaurant they had chosen to meet at for lunch.
"Of course, it was a nice surprise in my otherwise completely predictable day," he said. "Joey has Faith, so I'm going to leave my cell on," he joked, but, she noticed, did turn on the phone and leave it next to his water glass, just in case.
"So, how's your day?" he asked her. She cleared her throat.
"Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something."
"Okay. I think it's your turn, after the discussion I spurned last night," he said smiling.
"Phoebe mentioned something this morning… and I'm not going to lie to you, it's really been freaking me out…" she began awkwardly. He took her hand on top of the table.
"What's going on?"
"It's just… were you in love with me for the entire six years before all this started?" she blurted out nervously. She watched him, gauging a reaction. His blue eyes clouded over, and his features tightened. His anxious face.
"Why-why-why would you ask me that?" he stammered.
"You didn't answer me."
"What was the question again?"
"Chandler."
"Sorry. Okay, listen… it wasn't the entire six years," he started, and removed his hand from his instinctively. "It was more like… five and a half. And it wasn't like torturous, all-consuming, I'm going to die if I don't have you kind of love… at least not until a little while before you went to Boston." She shook her head in disbelief.
"You lied to me," she said sadly.
"What? I didn't lie to you. I just didn't tell you."
"It's the same thing. Chandler… this changes everything."
"Why? Why does it change everything?"
"Because our entire relationship is based around a lie. I thought that we were on the same page, that we got together out of the blue as a result of mutual attraction, and now I find out that you were… what? How do I even say it… secretly pining for me for basically my entire adult life? That puts us in opposite corners. Because oh my god," she said, realization coming over her face. "Of course you wanted to know where this was going. It seemed soon for that discussion to me, but for you… for you it's been six years in the making."
"Monica, you're blowing this way out of proportion."
"Am I?" she asked, rising.
"Wait, where are you going?"
"I have to get out of here," she said, making her way out of the restaurant. He caught up to her outside and grabbed her wrist.
"Monica, don't do this. Don't run away when things get complicated."
"I'm not running. I'm choosing." His face drained of color. He cleared his throat.
"Choosing… choosing what?" She took a deep breath and closed her eyes briefly.
"Choosing to end this now before one of us gets hurt."
"Monica, you can't-"
"Chandler, please. Our friendship is too important to me. And I should have taken that into consideration before any of this began. I can't lose you. And this entire thing showed me that I could, so easily, with one mistake, one count of dishonesty… and I can't do that."
"But I need you-" he argued, pleadingly. She put her index finger to his lips.
"I need you too. That's why this needs to happen. Chander… I want us to be friends. Best friends. I want to be there for Faith as much as I have been, I want to keep living with you… but how we started out. We had the right idea then, don't you think?" she asked, her voice raising at the end in a plea for him to agree and salvage what was left of their friendship. He paused momentarily, and then gave her what she wanted, as he promised her more than once he would always do.
"Yeah. You're probably right," he said, his heart breaking with every word. She sighed in relief and gave him a huge hug, refusing to admit that hers had, too.
